


The Life and Times of a Suburban Frog

by walterfairholmes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Climate Change, Environmentalism, Frogs, Gen, How Do I Tag, No Dialogue, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Second Person, Science, Written for a Class, environmental writing, i didnt even revise it, i guess?, like seriously, no beta we die like men, not explicitly mentioned but its still important, uuhhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21858166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walterfairholmes/pseuds/walterfairholmes
Summary: The experiences of a frog (and a scientist) over the years
Kudos: 3





	The Life and Times of a Suburban Frog

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a writing class and turned it in yesterday. Its kinda dumb but I felt like sharing. I hope you enjoy it. Constructive criticism is welcome!

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a frog. Yes, a frog. Well, I suppose you’re actually a toad. A Fowler’s Toad, to be more specific. Although, technically all toads are frogs. You live in North Carolina, in the suburbs of Raleigh, in my backyard, in the late 2010s. I listen to you every night of the summer, and you sing me to sleep with your calls. Your existence has been a defining part of all my summers, year after year. Sometimes, I run around the yard and chase you, but I always put you back where I found you after. I read a lot of books about you and other types of frogs, and watch videos and read articles online. But you don’t really know any of that. Because you’re a frog. You know that you are smaller than a lot of things where you live, and you know that you can hop really, really far. You know how to catch and eat bugs, and how to avoid snakes and birds and raccoons. You know where you live: the long, winding rushing water that snakes its way through both trees and every part of your life. You also know the smaller pool of water that is a ways away, and doesn’t change the way the stream does. There are fish there, and tall plants, all much larger than you. Some of the plants have colorful flowers on them, and some have fuzzy lumps. There is a place where water always flows down from, bubbling onto the surface. There are lily pads covering almost the whole pond; you can barely see the water unless you are swimming in it. Sometimes you sit on them and wait for bugs to fly too close so you can gobble them up. At night, you sit on them or on the flat surface surrounding the water. And when it’s warm and sticky and dark out, you sing. You sing to claim your part of the pond, your lilypad to sit on. You sometimes sing when it’s going to rain. Sometimes, you even sing so that the pond will be full of tadpoles after the seasons have come and gone once again. You are joined each night by many others like you, all wanting the same thing. When it’s cold, you dig deep into the ground and stay there and sleep until it’s warm again. In between there and the stream, there is a big, grassy area, and then a smaller area that is flat and rough and red like the area around the pond.

Or maybe you spend more of your time in and around the winding, wandering stream. Maybe you sing on branches that stretch from one side to the other, instead of lilypads, or maybe you just sit by the side of the stream. You might spend the cold months in the dirt, or you might spend them in the sand. There are not very many fish here, and the plants that grow in the water are much smaller. The water is not as deep, but it’s still deep enough for you to swim in. 

* * *

Now imagine, again, that you are a frog. Still a Fowler’s Toad, still living in the same stream (or maybe the pond). Not the same frog, but a distant descendant of the one from before, as many years have passed, and it is now the 2050s. But you don’t know any of this, either, because you’re still a frog. You still know the land; the stream and the pond. You still sing when it is warm enough. It seems you are often one of only a few singing in the particular way that you do. Sometimes you are the only one. If you knew what loneliness meant, that would be the one thing you would use to describe your existence. You do know that it is almost always hot and sticky, night and day. It has been this way for your entire (very short) life. It rains a lot; more often than not, it seems. Sometimes it rains so much and so hard and the wind is so strong that you are lucky to have lasted this long. Sometimes it is so hot that all you can do is sit in the water and wait it out. Sometimes, after a particularly long rain, the water doesn’t even stay in the stream any more. It’s everywhere, and there is nowhere to go. 

You, and others like you, are still a defining part of my summers and my years, and of course you still don’t know it. I am older now, and I don’t chase you around like I used to. I still fall asleep to your songs, but now it is often only you, a solitary voice in the night. 

Imagine that it is still the 2050s, but you are a different frog. Or maybe you are the same one. It doesn’t really matter. You sing, like you always have and always will, but you cannot roam free. You have water and plants and dirt and everything you need, but you only have a small space. You used to be able to go wherever you want. One day, you found yourself in this small space, with a couple of others very much like yourself. You have no idea why, but at least, if you had words, ‘lonely’ wouldn’t be one of them anymore.

Now I spend most of my time with you and other frogs. I am middle-aged, and I am a scientist. I work at a science museum, and I study amphibians like yourself, as well as helping to educate the public on the history and future of species such as yours. I want to stop your all-too-possible extinction. I take care of you, in an attempt to save at least one part of a dying population—a dying world, even. I want to learn, but I wish I didn’t have to do it like this. I wish I could do it in nature, in the stream, but I am trying my best to ensure that you survive, and others after you. I want future generations to be able to fall asleep to your songs as I did, I want them to be able to experience the same excitement that leads to a fascination with the world around them, I want them to be able to be a part of real nature. I miss hearing all of you every summer night as I fall asleep. It’s a rare treat, these days, and I have learned to appreciate it so much more. A great deal has changed in the last few decades, both in my life and in everyone’s. I got married; it rains more. I completed all my years of education; it has all but stopped getting cold here. I moved around the country a few times; there have been fewer frogs every year. I ended up back in my childhood home; there seems to be more brown than green now everywhere I look. I want to turn that around, to bring back everything we’ve lost in the past decades, but I know I can’t. I am just one person, and I don’t have a time machine. What I can do is work towards saving what we still have. And that’s you. Not just you, but what you represent to me and so many others. A healthy world, one that isn’t totally barren. Hope for the future, that maybe, just maybe, we can improve things. They will never be the same, no. But maybe they can be different, but still good. If enough people work hard enough, the world can get better than it is, and maybe even better than it used to be.

Anyway, back to you. You, the frog, who has no idea what is happening, or why. Over time, you realize that it is not so sticky all the time here, and you won’t get swept away by wind or rain. There are others here too, and they sing with you. Soon, there are tadpoles, too.

I am glad to see that the frogs are doing well in their new habitat. I have a little more hope that they will last a long time. Hopefully, when (not if, when) things get better, they can be released back into my stream and other streams, lakes, and ponds around the country.

***

Several more years have passed, maybe even a couple of decades. You are yet another frog, back in the stream again. Maybe you are descended from one of the tadpoles from the museum. Maybe you are a descendant of one of the few frogs that were left in the stream over the last few decades. The stream is not the way it used to be, but it is not hot and sticky all year round anymore, although still more than it used to be long ago. Part of the year, it even gets cold and you have to dig down into the dirt. The rain and wind aren’t so bad anymore. You are not alone in your songs. You experience these things, but you are a frog, so you do not really understand any of this. But you experience it all. Each season, it seems there are more and more songs joining with yours. Each year, there are plenty of tadpoles. Like the frogs generations ago, when I was young, you learn the stream and the pond and the grass and the trees. Once again, it is your home, and you are finally secure there.

I am old now, but I, too, am content with my life. I have moved elsewhere, into the mountains. But I visit my hometown sometimes, and listen to the frogs like I did when I was my grandchildren’s age. I am proud of the work I and so many other scientists have done, and how much we were all able to work together and make change across the globe. I am satisfied with how my life has turned out. All of us are, not just the scientists. Nature is not what it once was, when I was a child, and it never will be. But it is there, it exists, and it will for a long time into the future. 

And I am satisfied with my life, all of it. Everything I did, all the time I spent studying and caring for you and several generations before you, was worth it, because they are back. When the time comes, I will leave knowing that I managed to make the world a better place.


End file.
